Ellie's World: Blog

Mary Ann Powers worked on the ENIAC

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:45:46 GMT

http://www.legacy.com/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=107260561

My great aunt, Mary Ann (Berry) Powers, passed away in April. In addition to being a nice person, she also had a cool and unusual career. As a young woman, she studied mathematics and went on to work on the ENIAC. She had some good stories that she told about her work many years ago. She didn't know that computers were going to end up where they did, but was always neat to hear about what the industry used to be like.

It seems that many comments here are about Windows Live Hotmail. If you'd like to give feedback to the team, please leave those comments on the team's blog at http://mailcall.spaces.live.com.

I'm in "Google Gets Ready to Rumble with Microsoft"

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 01:46:24 GMT

The New York Times recently published an article about Google taking on Microsoft with a variety of different products.

I'm on page 5 of the article. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/technology/16goog.html

It says:

Ellie Powers-Boyle, 25, a graduate of M.I.T., works on Microsoft’s Web e-mail products. In the last three years, she says, there have been a dozen significant upgrades of the Web e-mail product, and she has worked on three or four new features each time. “We iterate quickly,” she says. “For someone of my generation, the whole idea of waiting years to see if you made the right product makes no sense.”

I'm on Channel 9 talking about scrum

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:29:45 GMT

I still can't ever find the stomach to watch myself in videos, but I did get interviewed by Grace Francisco, my co-chair of Women@Microsoft SVC about scrum and how the Windows Live Hotmail team has been using it.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=323628

Windows Live Hotmail is out of beta!

Mon, 07 May 2007 22:57:23 GMT

I joined the Windows Live Hotmail team in August 2004, and have been working on Windows Live Hotmail (a.k.a. Kahuna) ever since. Today we finally got out of beta! We'd done some earlier pilots in certain markets and things went relatively smoothly, so today we are taking the plunge! When users sign up for new Hotmail accounts, they'll get Windows Live Hotmail.

A sad day for May Zhou's family, friends, and women in technology

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:11:06 GMT

Updated 1/26/2007

This story has gone from bad to worse. They found her body in the trunk of her car, all the way out in Santa Rosa in the parking lot of the junior college. Police say some evidence points to suicide, but they are still investigating. May was in my class at MIT. She is one of the truly brilliant people in electrical engineering, and very hard-working and thoughtful. I really want to know what happened.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/16555008.htm

---------------

May Zhou is a graduate student at Stanford. She has been missing since Saturday. She went to MIT with me. I hope they have some good news soon....

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/16535934.htm

Favorites so far from CES 2007, Day 1

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:17:58 GMT

Favorites from CES 2007 day 1:

PowerSquid, an extension cord made to accomodate five bulky AC adapters
A phone that can go underwater, even in a pool or in a shower
LED candles that detect when you blow them out
Actually seeing all of Microsoft's launched products together in one place -- the booth is huge.

Pictures coming soon. Drop by the Windows Live Mail booth to say hi.

Collecting customer feedback

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:19:43 GMT

It seems like a lot of people are using my blog for submitting problems with Hotmail or Windows Live Mail. It's great to be able to interact with customers. If you're having problems, you probably want to go to the Mail team blog or the Mail support blog.

Here are some answers to some common questions:

To get Windows Live Mail, go to http://ideas.live.com and sign up
To switch back to MSN Hotmail, go to the Options page and click on "Switch back to MSN Hotmail"
If your account has expired because you didn't login for 30 days, there is unfortunately no way to recover your mail. To prevent this from happening, to http://ideas.live.com and sign up for Windows Live Mail which has a 30-day expiration period
If you want to see the full message header, right-click on the message and choose "view source"
To add someone in your address book to a message you are composing, click on "To" or just start typing the name of the person you'd like to send an email to.

BarCamp San Francisco - this weekend

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:31:27 GMT

I'll be at BarCamp San Francisco this weekend to see what's up and talk more with people about Windows Live and the future of email in the Web 2.0 world.

Windows Live Mail: getting fewer ads

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:21:45 GMT

For those of you who have been asking for fewer ads on Windows Live Mail, we've heard you. Microsoft has decided to remove one of the big ads from Windows Live Mail. This is a very expensive decision, and we hope it will make users happier by having more space to read their mail.

The product team has wanted to do this for a long time, so we're really glad everyone at Microsoft is committed to it so we can make it happen.

I hope you're all excited about this! (The change will be in a coming release, not immediate.)

http://news.com.com/Hotmails+new+address/2009-1038_3-6064507.html?tag=nefd.lede

Talking about M5 is alive!

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:07:56 GMT

Note: These new features will be released soon, but they are not out yet!

The feature list for M5 was just announced. There was more great work by the team in Shanghai on the Hotmail Classic View -- that's the view of Windows Live Mail that works for browsers other than Internet Explorer 6.0+. We're continuing to monitor user and business needs in terms of browser support.

If you want to try Windows Live Mail Beta, go to http://ideas.live.com. Posting to my blog is not a good way to get an invitation!

Quote

M5 is alive!

Well, almost. It's coming very soon, we promise. But for those who can't wait, here's a sneak peak at all the new features for Windows Live Mail Beta “M5” (M5 is geek speak for Milestone 5). If you're a WL Mail beta tester you won’t have to do anything to get it -- your inbox will update automatically. If you aren't a beta tester, go sign up!

I don't have space to review all the great features that are already part of Windows Live Mail, you can look over our earlier blog posts for that. This is just all the NEW stuff.

Hotmail Classic View
OK, I know it's a contradiction to name anything with the name “classic” as NEW. But it is. We know our customers roam….and that they don't always log in to Windows Live Mail on computers with IE (and many times they aren’t even logging in from a computer at all). We want to help make sure you guys can get your mail any time you need. Now for people not using Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher, we have a new view of WL Mail, what we're calling the Hotmail Classic View. Some of you have noticed that we're missing a few features. Well, we're still not done, but there's tons of new stuff including:

Contact picker on compose
Report & Delete for junk mail
Download/send/forward attachments
Reply to and Forward mail
CC/Bcc fields on compose
Move message to folders
Safety messaging

Besides additional browser support, Hotmail Classic serves another purpose. While we know the vast majority of you love Windows Live Mail, we do know that some of our customers miss things about Hotmail that they've been using for years (we'll admit, it surprised us how beloved the checkboxes were!). Think of Hotmail Classic as a bit like a soda that came back as classic ?. Hotmail Classic view has the familiarity of Hotmail, but with the benefit of being built on top of the new, more robust Windows Live Mail platform.

Mail Invitations for Valentine's Day

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 18:57:28 GMT

Happy Valentine's Day! I'll be giving out 14 invitations to Windows Live Mail Beta to the first 14 people who email elizabethireland (at sign) hotmail (period) com from their Hotmail or MSN address. Be sure you go to http://spaces.msn.com/mailcall to make sure Windows Live Mail is available in your area. Leaving a comment on my blog will not get you an invitation!

Where in the world is the Windows Live Mail team?

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:42:12 GMT

I'm glad to report that a lot of people have been able to get into the beta successfully. We're still working on our next batch of new features. I think you'll be really pleased at the big things we're adding, and no, I can't tell you what or when we'll be releasing. Thanks to everybody out there testing Windows Live Mail, especially our loyal beta testers who have been with us since last year.

Good times in Vegas at CES

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:00:31 GMT

In my second time in Las Vegas, I spent the days showing the new Windows Live Mail beta and getting customer feedback. I even saw some of our long-time MVPs who have been testing Windows Live Mail for months.

Going to CES

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:53:27 GMT

I'll be at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in the Windows Live Mail booth. There should be some exciting announcements, and it'll be good to meet some more current or future Mail beta users.

MIT grad wins "Apprentice"

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 21:59:38 GMT

Wow, looks like education pays off. This MIT grad has won the latest season of The Apprentice.

Accepted the invite but no Kahuna yet?

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 05:53:02 GMT

Here's an issue that has affected a good number of people who have accepted invites to Windows Live Mail but are still seeing the old Hotmail interface:

Why is this happening?
Some of your accounts need to go through an extra migration step to be able to use Kahuna. Other accounts can be migrated immediately.

If I don't see the Kahuna UI immediately, what do I do?
Wait two weeks, then email me: elizabethireland ("at" sign) hotmail ("period" symbol) com. When you accepted the invitation, your account was automatically put in the queue for migration, which can take up to two weeks.

Sorry that the messaging didn't make this clear, and thanks for your patience!

Go Shanghai team! I can use basic Kahuna from my Mac!

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 22:52:13 GMT

I've spent the past months on the phone and the computer late at night working with the fabulous new team in Shanghai. I'm really proud of all of the work we've done, especially with a new team and so much to do in a very short time. They are very smart and have learned fast.

If any of you on IE 6+ want to try out the basic Kahuna UI, here is what you can do:

Go to http://mail.live.com and login
Change the URL so that mail.aspx becomes applicationmainreach.aspx (then press enter to reload)

You'll know you're on basic Kahuna not main Kahuna when you see a special Today page and a message in the toolbar.

You can read my full post on the mailcall blog.

If you are having a problem with your account, you can contact me by emailing: elizabethireland ("at" sign) hotmail (the symbol for "period") com.

Tokyo

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:33:52 GMT

I’ll start this off by saying that my Japanese is pretty bad, so don’t go thinking that I’m any sort of expert. I did well in six years of Japanese classes in high school and middle school, but it was not like taking the easy way out with Spanish. At my peak, I spoke like a four-year-old Japanese kid with a bad accent. And I haven’t taken a Japanese class in about 5 ½ years.

With that said, I’ll say a big thank-you right now to my Japanese teachers, Hiroko sensei and Mogami sensei. I always wished I actually got good at Japanese, but after being in China for a week, I learned am grateful for my skills, as minimal as they are. There is an enormous difference between being a very foreign foreigner who speaks the language at the level of a two-year-old, and a very foreign foreigner who can only say “thank you.”

In China, all I could say was “thank you.” I could also point at things, read a few characters I learned in Japanese class, and copy characters out of tour books for taxi drivers to read. I got around surprisingly well, but it’s not really a good way to interact with a culture. I really want to learn Chinese!

In Japan, I was able to use my six years of study to communicate the following concepts using actual words (Japanese only!) and not just my ridiculous miming skills:

My hotel is closed. I’m sorry, but could I please use your cell phone to call a new one? I have the phone number here.
Thank you so much for calling the hotel. Yes, I would like a single room.
Can I ride in your taxi? I would like to go to this hotel. No, I don’t know the address but here it is on the map. Oh, this map doesn’t have street names. Here is the name of the hotel. I’m sorry, my Japanese isn’t very good.
Thank you for calling the hotel on the pay phone to get directions. You are a very good person.
Yes, this is my hotel. Thank you for driving me!

I felt like an actual person, able to communicate with other people using actual words – and neither the lady with the phone or the taxi driver spoke any English. J

A big shout-out goes to the kind people of Tokyo for their late-night hospitality. Boo on the Tokyo International Youth Hostel for closing before 11:30 PM. Also, boo to the high cab fares in Tokyo: ~$18 for a 10-minute short taxi ride – it cost about as much as a one-hour ride from Shanghai to Pudong airport!

To do now: learn Chinese -- the tones are really hard!

Beijing

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 05:22:01 GMT

I took the overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing -- it was some of the best sleep I got during that week! I traveled there myself, speaking only one word of Mandarin: "Xiexie" (thank you). The Lonely Planet guidebook was a huge help, and I made it through without getting lost or getting sent to jail!

I only had two days and one night in Beijing, so I spent my time running around to see as much as possible. Beijing has more historical attractions and has had less western influence.

There were far fewer foreigners (like me) so I stuck out a lot. Admittedly, I'm not a very normal-looking person (5'10" with red hair and pale skin) so more people were staring at me than in Shanghai, which I expected. When I was in Japan about nine years ago, sometimes people would come up to me because they wanted to practice their English conversation, but in Beijing and slightly less in Shanghai, people would often approach me to sell me stuff.

At the Great Wall and Tieneman Square, somewhere between six and twelve different people approached me to ask to have their photo taken with me. Sometimes even the grandmothers would want to get in the photo. The first time, I thought they wanted me to take their photo with Mao's portrait... but why would they ask the foreigner? Oh, they wanted to be in the picture with me and Mao. It was kind of a strange experience, but it was kind of funny and I went along with it as part of the price of being the foreigner. So if you see some Chinese blogs with photos of what looks like The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, well, now you know the photos are the genuine, not photoshopped.

Shanghai

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 03:42:00 GMT

This week, I got to meet the excellent Shanghai members of the Hotmail team. Over the past few months, the team members have done a lot of work on some new features that I'll tell you about later here. They've done great work especially given that they're all new to the project.

Shanghai is an interesting city, especially as it's changing so quickly. Johnny has played the most gracious host, showing us the city and trying to make us feel like locals.

Beta Invite Winners - more coming later

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 22:13:57 GMT

Wow, it's great to see how many people are interested in trying the Mail Beta! It's also good to read your feedback to know what users are looking for in email.

I read all of your responses, and I wish I could invite everybody right now. I'm giving only five invites now so I'll stick with that. I'll have more available later. Stay tuned!

Winners, please send an email to me elizabethireland at hotmail dot com with

1. Your hotmail.com or msn.com address (if I don't have it already)

2. Your URL so I know who's who.

This round's winners are:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/SabinnaChang/

Joseph Green (I have your email addr)

Vakul (I have your email addr)

http://spaces.msn.com/members/sunithnair/

http://spaces.msn.com/members/aayushpuri/

When you get migrated to the beta, note that it's a beta and not a finished product. Thanks to all beta testers for their feedback!

Mail Beta Demo at MIT + Beta Invites

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 02:54:09 GMT

This week, I was glad to have the opportunity to go back to my alma mater to talk about Microsoft's opportunities to MIT students. I remember when I was in that same place, studying hard and wondering how I was ever going to reconcile my passion for geeking out with technology with my even greater desire to make people's lives better. I figured I'd have to choose my nerd side or my activist side, becoming either a hardcore bioinformatics programmer or a relentless civil rights attorney.

Then I found out about the field of human-computer interaction, and its manifestation in the program manager position, which is offered to new college grads at very few companies. It can be a great combination of dreaming things up and getting things done.

I enjoyed getting to tell students about how being a program manager means using your people skills (long undervalued at MIT) as well as the technical excellence you've spent years building.

Near the end of the presentation, I got to do a demo of the Mail Beta. Most students in the room had multiple free mail accounts, so it was great to show off a new product I knew they used in their daily life. The generally stoic audience made some noise as I showed off some of our flashier features such as right-click and drag-and-drop. Students I talked with afterwards were impressed to learn that the Mail Beta team had built this all ourselves in the course of about a year, and that what we were showing was really a well-reasoned first draft, not a finished product.

One thing that new college grads want is to contribute to something new, exciting, and meaningful. Given a variety of options around graduation time, I chose to go work on the Mail Beta because of the promise of the new product.

I'll be giving out a few beta invitations to a few of the students I met there, and because all of you out there in blog land couldn't make it over to the presentation in Cambridge, MA, I'll be giving out five more invites on this blog.

Here's what you have to do to get an invite:

(a) Track back to this blog post, OR

(b) If you can't create a trackback, post a link to this blog post on your web site and leave the URL here as a comment.

I'll pick five people to get invites in this round. To increase your chances, include in your comment or trackback one reason why you find e-mail useful and what your e-mail software should do for you that it doesn't yet.

Intern Program Bio

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:52:14 GMT

I was an intern at Microsoft as an intern program manager on the Hotmail team in the summer of 2003. I had enough fun that I decided to come back full-time a year ago. You can learn more about my experience on the Microsoft Careers web site.

Kahuna team on Channel 9

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 06:35:35 GMT

Come check out the Kahuna team on Channel 9.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=118405

Microsoft Analyst Wins Bad Fiction Contest

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:50:57 GMT

I had heard about the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest, but little did I know that one of my colleagues would one day win the highest award. This puts "It was a dark and stormy night..." to shame.

Treo 670 will run Windows Mobile?

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:08:22 GMT

The rumor mill says that Palm's Treo 670 will run Windows Mobile instead of Palm OS. As a user of both Mac OS and Windows, I was worried about the capability to sync with both types of computers. In this article, some say that Windows Mobile syncs better with a Mac than Palm OS does. Improved native sync capabilities would be great because one of my big complaints about my Treo is that it doesn't sync so well with either Outlook or Palm Desktop for Mac.

Blogging from Mobile Spaces

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:11:52 GMT

I just heard about http://mobile.spaces.msn.com from Omar, and it rocks! I am now blogging from my Treo in its squishy new Speck case. The Treo's screen is big enough to make the data service useful.

A home for my Treo: SkinTight case by Speck Products

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:12:35 GMT

I think I finally found the right case for my Treo 650. The Treo 650 is great, but it's quite slippery. After the first time my Treo tried an acrobatic maneuver and flew out of my hand, I decided to invest $20-50 in a case to prevent my Treo's early death. I credit the 5-year life of my previous electronic brain (Palm Vx) to an aluminum hard case.

Because my Treo is a cell phone and a PDA, I carry it around a lot more than my Palm Vx, and I even sometimes put it into my pocket. I checked out leather cases (too slippery and wimpy), the aluminum hard cases (too bulky and interfering), and the silicone cases (just right?).

The SkinTight case by Spec Products is the best Treo case I've found.

Material: The rubbery material is instantly appealing, and Speck's feels thick enough to provide some protection in case of a fall. The rubbery (not sticky) feel and the grips on the bottom keep the Treo safety in my hand. This non-slip cover is especially great for longer conversations when I un-ergonomically hold the phone with my shoulder while talking. The transluscent white color doesn't show much lint at all. The only drawback with the material is that it's harder to slide into your pocket, but I usually carry mine in a bag.
Hard screen cover: Speck's case stands out from other silicone cases because it includes a flip-up hard plastic screen cover. This is a great addition for any Treo that must do daily battle in a bag with keys and other hard or pointy objects. You can easily flip up the screen cover to use the Treo's touch screen.
Button access: The keyboard is completely exposed, so it's still easy to type text messages, but now it doesn't feel like the Treo is about to jump out of your hands. The rest of the buttons are behind silicone, but the articulated button areas are easy to press. The small raised dots on the four-way directional pad make it even easier to use than without the case. There are cut-out sections for all of the other access points of the phone, from the camera to the data port.

Speck also makes the ToughSkin, a thicker rubbery case for Treos that must withstand more extreme conditions or more klutzy owners. I chose not to get this one because it's way too big for pockets in women's pants.

No wonder this is a great product: Speck's cases are designed in downtown Palo Alto, my home town.

Join the Mail Beta!

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 20:30:51 GMT

We're giving out some invitations to join the Mail Beta! Go check out our team blog for more information.

The Microsoft Mail Beta is finally here!

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 18:29:15 GMT

After months and months of having to answer obliquely that "fixing e-mail on the web" is what I've been doing all day, I can finally announce the Mail Beta (team blog)! Our team blog is going to have more information about what the Mail Beta really is -- there have been so many rumors flying around about it. Some of the rumors you've read are true, and others aren't.

First things first:

We put a lot of thought and work into the new user interface. I hope all of you like it better than Hotmail.
Unfortunately I can't get you on the Mail Beta at this hot second. Try our team blog for more information when we're able to add more people.
We wanted to get the Mail Beta out to users as fast as possible, so there are a lot of features that are still under development. Expect to see a lot more from the Mail Beta in the future. We've probably thought a lot about including the features you want most, but hearing from our users helps prioritize what to work on first.

The team wanted to start over fresh with web mail. We had been running the Hotmail service for a long time, which gave us experience with what it takes to run a mail service for millions of people. We have so many different types of users -- everyone from my geeky friends from my college CS program to people in faraway countries for whom even getting access to a shared computer is a challenge. It's hard to make things easy and powerful at the same time, but we've found some cool ways to do that -- to make mail faster, simpler, and safer.

I was the program manager on the user experience framework feature team. Our goal was to create a unified framework for building a brand-new web-based mail experience. We wanted to make the user interface clean and pleasant to use. We worked on new navigation, fonts, colors, options pages, integration with the help system, the header, error messages, message selection, and a bunch of other parts of the UI. We had developers, testers, designers, usability people, operations people, planners, and all sorts of other folks working to...

... put the HOT back in web mail.

I do welcome suggestions and constructive criticism about what we can keep doing to make the Mail Beta even better.

Red Sox at Oakland

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:26:58 GMT

The Oakland A's somehow beat the Boston Red Sox, but the fans didn't care. Even though the game was in Oakland, about a third of the fans were sporting Red Sox gear. I see Red Sox gear everywhere in the Bay Area. It's a testament to what influence the Red Sox have on sports, as well as the mobility and loyalty of Boston fans.

Las Fallas de Valencia 2005

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:44:17 GMT

Valencia is home to one of the world's biggest week-long parties. Las fallas de Valencia (Valenciano for "the fires of Valencia") is a cross between Mardi Gras, Burning Man, and a medieval celebration of spring and the Virgin Mary. I had a great time relaxing, celebrating, making new friends, and speaking truly terrible Spanish.

Chinese New Year in San Francisco

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 07:02:32 GMT

It wouldn't be Chinese New Year in San Francisco without: 1. The recycling dragon, provided by a local waste management company. 2. The gay and lesbian pride band. 3. Bhangra dancers.

Jef Raskin Passes Away

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 19:06:32 GMT

Jef Raskin passed away last week due to pancreatic cancer at age 61. Up until his last days, he was working on a new computer interface, Archy. His son, Aza Raskin, has been working on the project with Jef. Jef also had a passion for learning of in many fields, and taught math to his kids and their friends. I am curious to see the Archy Jef created and what it will become in Aza's hands -- Aza went to high school with me, and is a very creative and brilliant person. Jef's passing is a great loss to everyone he knew, as well as millions of computer users and designers.

http://www.raskincenter.org/pressrelease.html

The city ate my bicycle

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 18:10:50 GMT

On Saturday, between 5 and 6 PM, San Francisco swallowed my bicycle whole, leaving no trace. It was locked to a bike rack at the corner of 4th St. and Folsom. It wasn't a particularly nice bike, but it rode well and had adjustable handle bars so I could ride it without aggravating my wrists. It served me loyally on the streets of Boston and San Francisco. RIP, my favorite junk-cycle.

For you bicyclists out there, check out www.kryptonite.com to find out more about how Kryptonite U-locks can be picked with a Bic pen. It turns out that you can exchange your bike locks for ones that can't be picked so easily. I wish I knew that on Saturday!

Sunday Bike Ride

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 00:48:25 GMT

On Sunday, I biked across San Francisco, through Golden Gate Park, and out to the ocean. Then I rode back. The whole trip was about 15 miles. The day was beautiful and blue. In the park, there was a huge group of people on rollerblades and roller skates, dancing to funk music. Some of them had choreographed routines. Others just made stuff up. Two guys in their 30s on roller skates were amazing break dancers!

Quick trip up north

Mon, 27 Dec 2004 22:57:39 GMT

I went up to Marin and Sausalito for the day. Jon took some of these photos.

Ellie's World, Reborn

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 05:01:38 GMT

Since the mid-1990s, I have had a personal home page. It used to be hosted on various school servers and the HTML was painstakingly handwritten in vi, pine, BBEdit, and emacs. I used to take photos off my digital camera and scp them to a server. I stopped updating my page a while ago, and I've generated way too many photos lately to bother uploading any of them. I'm not really into this whole blog thing, but I'll try MSN and see how the new MSN services work for sharing photos.